In recent years, an increasing amount of video content has been generated from internet protocol (IP) cameras located remotely from a location of a user viewing the IP camera video content. The generated video content is often encrypted by an application running on a networking device (e.g., gateway, router, etc.) prior to being transmitted to a client device of the user, where the encrypted video content is decrypted by an application running on the client device. In this case, the networking device, upon receipt of data packets for a video stream, encrypts each packet of data and transmits the encrypted data to the user's client device.
Low end networking devices that are sold to consumers are typically priced at a range that is affordable to ordinary consumers. These networking devices contain processors that can handle execution of traditional data encryption algorithms, which are suitable for handling text-based data. However, the processors of these low end networking devices may not be robust enough to encrypt a steady stream of data packets from a video stream via traditional data encryption algorithms.
Encrypting all of the bytes of the video stream not only introduces a delay during the video playback session, but also incurs significant CPU time when the data packets are encrypted by the networking device and decrypted by the user's client device. For example usage of processor of a low end networking device during the encryption process may exceed 99% of the maximum processing capability of the processor. Therefore, the networking device may become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of processing required to encrypt the stream of data packets. While this problem may be somewhat alleviated if the processing power of low end networking device is increased. However, adding additional processors to the networking device and/or using faster processors in the networking device would likely lead to an increase in the cost to produce the networking device as well as an increase in the sales price of the networking device. As a result, the networking device may no longer be affordable to ordinary consumers.
Hence a need exists for a way to encrypt data packets of a video stream without overtaxing a low end networking device and without increasing the cost for producing the networking device.